Letters
by HSGisME123
Summary: Many, many years after the events of the movie take place, Sarah receives a letter. What will she do about it? (Characters are not paired together because nothing romantic happens)
1. Chapter 1

Sarah had come a long way since that fateful night. She had matured into a beautiful, talented young lady. Now a well known name on Broadway, she was used to fan letters. She hadn't expected this one, though.

"_My beautiful Sarah_," it began. "_I hope this letter finds you well. It's been some time since I last spoke to you. I wouldn't be surprised if you no longer remembered me. I would like to arrange a time for us to speak again, to catch up on old times. I will be in town to watch your latest performance in thirteen days. If you would like to act upon my invitation, please respond before then._"

It was signed simply with an elegant "_J_".

She had gotten letters before that requested her to meet people she didn't know. She never accepted them, but always politely replied explaining why. She figured this would be no different.

"_Dear Sir or Madam J_," she wrote with her well practiced penmanship. "_As you choose to remain anonymous, I cannot be certain whether or not I know you. Unless I do know you, I will have to politely decline your invitation. However, please do enjoy my, and the rest of the cast's performance. We gladly accept your patronage._"

She looked at the letter to confirm where to send it to. Oddly, the return address was unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. It was odd, to say the least.

The next day, after rehearsal, she found that she had another letter.

"_Dearest Sarah_," it said. "_If my desire to remain anonymous is the only thing preventing our meeting again, then I shall gladly make you aware of who I am. Are you still interested in meeting me after the show?_"

This time, it was signed "_Jareth_," just as elegantly as the previous letter. The name seemed familiar, and foreboding, but Sarah could not place where she knew it from.

"_Dear Mister Jareth,_" she replied, her mind telling her that Jareth was most definitely a masculine name, "_I am afraid that I still do not recall who you are. I do admit that your name is familiar, but I still cannot place it. If I can remember you, then there may be a chance of me wanting to meet you after the show. Unless that happens, though, then unfortunately I will not meet you. Perhaps a picture would jog my memory?_"

She sent it, expecting that after the next reply she could simply say "no" with good reason. The response was in her room the next day.

"_Dear Sarah,_" it said. "_Unfortunately, I never bothered to actually own a camera, so I do not have any pictures of myself. However, I can describe my appearance, if it would help._

"_I have golden hair and mismatched eyes. I've been told that my cheekbones are rather high and apparent. I am a man of great importance. I am also a talented juggler, if that helps at all._"

"That's odd," she thought. "Who, in this day and age, doesn't own a camera?" Well, she had to admit, he's trying very hard to get her to meet him. Who did she know that has blonde hair, mismatched eyes, and juggles? And what did he mean by "great importance?" There was no harm in asking him, right?

"_Dear Jareth,_" she wrote. "_I am attempting to picture you in my head, but I cannot seem to do it. It appears I am familiar with several men who have blonde hair, but I don't know anyone with mismatched eyes, or at the very least, I do not remember them. I'm not sure about the juggling bit, as I don't think I know any jugglers. What exactly is this "great importance" of which you are a man of?_"

Again, the next day she had a response.

"_Dear Sarah,_" it said. "_I have tried being subtle and patient because I am afraid the memories you may have of me, however deeply buried, are not fond ones. I am simply wishing to start with a clean slate and right the wrongs of the past, which unfortunately, you are a part of. I sincerely apologize if the memories only cause hatred for me, and I understand completely if you do not wish to meet me after your show. I will still see it, though._"

This time, it was signed, still beautifully, "_Jareth, the Goblin King._"

The memories came back, and he was right. They were painful, brutal, and even terrifying. Under no circumstances would anyone consider them "fond". She did not, and would not trust him. This time, she didn't write a response until the day before the performance.

"_Goblin King,_" it said. "_I know I am going to regret this, but I will accept your invitation. I wish to express my distaste for you in person. There is a coffee shop close to the theatre which stays open late on performance nights. You should have no trouble finding it. Meet me there after the show. If you want to prove to me that you really have changed, do it then._"


	2. Chapter 2

The night of the performance came, and she pushed the letters as far back into her mind as she could. She focused solely on being who she was supposed to be, a character. She didn't try to find him in the audience, she didn't take her mind off of her performance for one minute. She was too professional to worry about such things. Until the show was over, there was no audience. Only her, the rest of the cast and crew, and the stage.

It wasn't until she was getting congratulations from the other cast members after the show that she remembered her previous engagement. She politely excused herself from the celebrations and walked to the coffee shop.

When she got there, there was only one other customer in the shop, and there was no mistaking him. He had picked out a nice little table for two by a window. Sarah ordered her coffee and sat down across from him. He pulled out her last letter from his coat and placed it on the table.

"You gave me very little time to prepare," he started.

"So did you," Sarah interrupted. "Fifteen years ago."

Jareth sighed. "If you're going to keep bringing that up, then why am I even bothering to make amends?"

"First impressions are important," she replied. "It's hard to forgive a kidnapper who almost killed you multiple times over the course of a few hours."

"It might be easier if you let me apologize for it."

"What's there to say? 'Oh, I'm sorry I kidnapped your baby brother! And all those death traps and blades and sending a city out to attack you was just a misunderstanding!'?"

"Would you prefer to discuss this in private, Sarah?"

"No, actually. I want you out in the open where you can't try anything to magically persuade me into forgiving you. I want you to show me you've changed on your own. No magic, no peaches, no glitter, nothing!"

"You're not making this easy."

"Well maybe next time you'll think before putting fourteen-year-olds through that kind of nonsense!"

"Will you SHUT UP AND LET ME TALK? I'M TRYING TO SHOW YOU HOW I'VE CHANGED AND JUST HOW SORRY I AM BUT YOU'RE NOT LETTING ME!" If him yelling wasn't what made Sarah go quiet, then the the awkward stares from everyone who happened to be within earshot did.

"I'm sorry," he began. The tone of his voice showed that it was for the yelling, and nothing more, yet. "But, at the same time, I need you to understand some things before you can see just how sorry I am."

He looked at Sarah with a serious gaze. The young woman was speechless.

"I apologize in advance if my methods of making you understand are against your idea of how I can prove just how pitiful I am." He grabbed Sarah's hand, and Sarah grabbed her coffee with her free hand, just in time for Jareth to teleport them both into the Labyrinth, straight to the throneroom. Sarah was about to throw the still very, very hot coffee into the Goblin King's face, but Jareth stopped her with a single word.

"Look," he said, pointing out the window.

What Sarah saw absolutely shocked her. The Labyrinth lay in ruins of its former glory. It used to sparkle, but now it had all turned dull, covered in dust. The swamps and bogs had dried up, and the stench had drifted in its evaporation. Citizens of the Goblin City and beyond were lined up outside the castle walls, waiting for food to be given to them in rations.

"What happened?" Sarah asked.

As much as Jareth wanted to say "You happened," he couldn't. It would have been lies.

"After you left, I was overrun with all sorts of negative emotions," he said. "Anger, sadness, grief, guilt, the lot of them. In my emotional distress, not only was I unable to perform my duties as king, but the Labyrinth itself decayed with my emotional state."

"So, stop being such a stick in the mud and fix it," Sarah said, bluntly. The words struck like an arrow through Jareth's heart.

"'Just fix it'?" he said. "You think that fifteen years of emotional torment is so easily solved by 'just fix it?'"

"Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it?" Sarah asked. "Pity you? Feel sorry for you? News flash, glitter brain, but I don't have magical powers. I can't fix your Labyrinth for you!"

"I brought you here to help me fix it," Jareth corrected. "Not to fix it for me."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Sarah asked him, giving him her best 'I've given up on logic with you' persona.

Jareth looked at the young woman with a solemn face. "I was hoping you could cheer me up."

"Well, keep hoping, Jareth," Sarah told him. "Because I-"

"I was being serious," he interrupted. "You are one of the few things that can cheer me up enough for the Labyrinth to sense my emotions and return itself to its former glory."

Sarah stopped talking. She stared out of the window for a moment, and turned back to the Goblin King.

"I was hoping that merely seeing you would have cheered me up enough," Jareth said. "At the very least, you replying to my letters gave me enough hope to fix the throneroom to be presentable. There used to be cobwebs and rats."

After all the emotional recollection, Jareth had tired himself out enough to fall back into his throne. Sarah stood where she was, by the window, trying to process everything that she had just witnessed, combined with Jareth's story.

"So, what do I have to do?" she asked.

"Just be here when I need you," he said, exhausted.


	3. Chapter 3

Several days had passed, and a routine had been created for Sarah. Every morning, she would wake up and remember that she was in the Labyrinth, and walk to Jareth's chambers, politely knocking on the door. Only on her first night there did he not answer immediately. She would ask to return home, because she still had a job after all, and that she would return to him once her work was done. In the back of her mind, though, she did wonder what Jareth had in store for her once her play had finished its final show.

She didn't have to wait long after her show's season ended. It was then that the nightmares started.

It wasn't Sarah having the nightmares, though. Jareth had started waking Sarah from her lovely dreams of spotlights and bouquets by his screams caused by dreams of shattering apart and his very world being rent in twain by loneliness and grief. When these started, Sarah would rush to his room, and comfort him until he fell back asleep. It reminded her vaguely of when Toby had been very little and would have nightmares, asking her to read him a story until he fell asleep, except Jareth only asked that she stayed by his side until he slept. Eventually, the nightmares became so frequent that Sarah requested that her bed be moved into his chambers, but Jareth declined her, saying it was "improper". On some nights, when Jareth had multiple in a row, Sarah took her blanket and pillow into the hallway and slept outside his door to save her the trip.

It was on one of these nights when she was sleeping outside his door, that he happened to exit his room. He looked at her with a bit of half-surprise.

"How long have you been doing this?" he asked.

"Since last week," she admitted.

Then, without warning, he pulled Sarah upright by her arm, and led her back into her bedroom. He made sure that she actually got into her bed, blanket and all, and took himself to the couch that had been on the other side of the room. He had guaranteed her that she would get a much better night's sleep in a bed than she would get on the floor, and almost instantly fell asleep on the couch. For the first time in two and a half weeks, Jareth slept soundly through the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Sarah woke up, turned to her left, and yelped. The Goblin King had moved himself from his usual spot on the couch to her bed. Even if he was on top of her covers, it still surprised her. Her scream woke him, and he immediately jumped off the bed and out of the line of fire, causing Sarah to slap the air.

"What do you think you're doing?!" she shouted.

"It got cold last night," he said, but it didn't sound like a good enough reason to Sarah.

"It's been cold on several nights, and you still didn't do this!"

"Actually, I did once or twice," he confessed, head lowered. "I just usually woke up before you did and went back to the couch."

"You promised me, Jareth," she told him. "You promised me on my first night here that nothing would happen to me without my consent, that you wouldn't so much as hold me unless I said you could."

"And nothing happened," he said. "I didn't hold you, I didn't touch you. I merely climbed on top of your covers so that your body heat would keep me warm."

"That's what blankets are for," she told him, while simultaneously throwing a pillow at him.

"The weather here is unpredictable and you know it," he said as he threw the pillow back. "It could be freezing for an hour, then boiling hot the next. How you've managed to consistently sleep under a blanket, I have no idea."

Sarah had no response ready, but she was still angry. She assaulted the Goblin King with a barrage consisting of every pillow that was on the bed, and when he still hadn't left, she picked them up and kept throwing them until he was out of her room. She shut the door, locked it, and curled up on her bed, brooding. The pillows did nothing to vent her steam, so she grabbed the nearest one and screamed into it. When that didn't work, she threw them again, as hard as she could, in whatever direction she happened to be facing.

She went over to her door and unlocked it again, sensing that Jareth would be back at any minute to give her a well-practiced apology, which she would feel like she had to accept for the sake of the Labyrinth. She had become so angry that she could feel tears beginning to drop down her face. It was like her mind was trying to cool herself off. She hated that, so much that she couldn't remain angry.


	5. Chapter 5

The frustration was still in her heart, even if the anger had been quenched, but she couldn't think of how to solve it. Surely she must have done something in the past when such situations would arise, but what? She was no musician, so playing music wouldn't help, and she didn't want to let Jareth win yet, so she wouldn't ask him to sing, either. What could she do?

She could tell a story. If it worked on Toby, maybe it would work on her. She picked herself back up, and held the biggest, fluffiest pillow as close to her as she could.

"Once upon a time," she said, as all the best stories started, "There was a young girl. She was not beautiful, to many. In fact, she was rather plain. She would spend her days locked away in her room of her own free will, telling herself stories, wanting them to be real. It was because of this love for stories that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with her. Her imagination was the most beautiful thing about her.

"One day, her family had become broken. Her mother, an actress, had fallen in love with a man that was not the young girl's father, and so they separated, and the young girl went with her birth father, even though she wanted to be with her mother, who always told the best, most imaginative stories. It was her mother who blessed the young girl with the gift of imagination in the first place.

"Her father also found new love, but the girl resented her new mother, not wanting to let her take the place of her real mother. In the young girl's mind, no step-mother could ever be nice. They all were wicked, just like the stories had said, and all siblings that she might gain from the new union would also be wicked. That is why she was so jealous of her new half-brother.

"One day, her jealousy had overcome her, and she had wished for her new brother to be taken far away. Of course, the Goblin King was all too happy to oblige, because all wishes wind up going to him, one way or another. When she came face to face with the King, she was frightened, not only because he was great and powerful, but because she had realized how her brother did not deserve her wrath, and how her jealousy and spite was childish and foolish.

"There was a way to get her brother back, but in order to do so, the young girl would have to solve the deadly Labyrinth. In thirteen hours, she had beaten every twist, turn, trick and trap that the Labyrinth had thrown at her, with the help of her friends that she made along the way. By saying her right words, she defeated the Goblin King, and won back her brother's freedom, and left the Labyrinth, hoping to never return again."

Sarah took a deep breath, and let it out as a single, relaxing sigh. Sometimes, stories didn't always help.

"Do you want to know what happened next?" asked a voice from her door.

"What happened next?" Sarah asked, not looking, still angry at the speaker from the events that morning.

"The young girl blossomed into an extraordinary young lady, and then into a very talented woman. Unfortunately, a few weeks after she left the Labyrinth, she cut off all contact with it, and without her presence, the King grew lonely and sad, and the Labyrinth fell into decay. Buildings crumbled, streets cracked, and the people grew hungry. The King was so unhappy that he felt the Labyrinth would never be fixed.

"But, one day, the King happened to look into a crystal, and saw the woman whom he remembered as the young girl, and he realized that only she could make him happy enough to fix the Labyrinth. He asked her to help him, but she was reluctant. It wasn't until she saw the devastation that the Labyrinth was in that she agreed to help."

"What happened next?" Sarah asked again, this time looking slightly up.

"I don't know," Jareth said. "It hasn't happened yet."

Sarah buried her face back into the pillow, this time feeling truly guilty for the Labyrinth's status. It was all her fault, she could feel it in her gut. She had to fix it, but how?

"What do I have to do?" Sarah asked. "I know the main answer is 'make you happy,' but I've been here for several weeks, and nothing has changed. What do I have to do?"

"I don't know, Sarah," Jareth said. "I just don't know."

"How do I make you happy?" Sarah asked, pleading, desperately wanting to fix the Labyrinth.

"I don't know, I told you, I don't know!"

Then, somewhere in the recesses of Sarah's mind, an idea struck. It was not a pleasant one, but it just might work. She got off the bed, slowly, still keeping the pillow between her and Jareth, the reason why, Sarah couldn't tell, but she felt it was right. She made her way to the door, and locked them both inside the room.

"What are you-"

Jareth was interrupted by Sarah suddenly kissing him. The Goblin King couldn't help but to blush. He hadn't expected that to happen, surely, but he wasn't complaining. The warmth of her lips on his was very pleasing indeed.

When they broke the kiss, there was a noticeable grin on Jareth's face. It wasn't so much of a beam, as Sarah had expected. It seemed more sly. That wasn't what was supposed to happen. He grabbed her wrists unexpectedly, and Sarah began to struggle in his grasp, making no progress.

"You have just made me a very happy King, Miss Williams."

She kept struggling as Jareth continued moving upon her, but she was powerless as he took it upon himself to please himself more, despite Sarah's shouting and protesting.

"And you will keep making me happy," he said. "Forever and ever."


	6. Chapter 6

Sarah awoke screaming. She hastily brushed herself off, as if she was covered in bugs, because it still felt like something was crawling all over her. In the dark, she couldn't tell where she was, except that she was no longer in the Goblin King's castle, which made her glad. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that she was in her own house. She let out a sigh of relief, and looked over to her clock.

2:57 A.M.

But then she noticed something on her dresser, a letter, addressed to her, sent from that accursed place from her dream. She decided that she would read it out of spite, so she turned on her lamp.

_Darling Sarah, _it began. _I hope this letter finds you well. I know you still don't trust me, but I do hope that you read this letter. I had received signs that a terrible nightmare beast had decided to sweep over your area. These creatures are not to be trifled with. They will make it seem like you're living life as usual, letting you live days, weeks, even months in mere hours. They will find you inside of a pleasant dream, but then they will eat all the happiness from your dreams, leaving you with terrible nightmares._

_Enclosed inside the letter, I have left a scented candle. Not only does it smell heavenly, but it wards off the nightmare beasts. I give you my word as king that it does nothing more. I am concerned for you, because your experiences in the Labyrinth will cause these beasts to be attracted to you, and your well-developed imagination._

_Sweet dreams,_

_Jareth the Goblin King._

Sarah stared at the letter, dumbfounded. That lousy king was trying to help her? All those letters she got in her dream were just a dream? She turned the letter over to find a small note on the bottom.

_P.S. I'm still coming to your show tomorrow. I was going to give the candle to you then, but the nightmare beasts came sooner than I anticipated. You are no longer obliged to meet me if you do not wish to._

She was even more confused now, but at least she wasn't totally unaware. She found a tiny candle holder, and lit the candle that she found inside the letter. The smell reminded her of Christmas, but with a hint more cinnamon than usual. She would have to meet him the next day, just to give him a letter of her own. She sat down and wrote it out.

_Dear Jareth, _she began. _Thank you for your concern. You don't know just how appreciative I am of this small, but great gift. Thank you for watching out for me._

_Sarah._


End file.
